Evidence of Christianity eBook

If it be said that Jesus, having tried the other plan,
turned at length to this; I answer, that the thing
is said without evidence; against evidence; that it
was competent to the rest to have done the same, yet
that nothing of this sort was thought of by any.

CHAPTER VI.

One argument which has been much relied upon (but
not more than its just weight deserves) is the conformity
of the facts occasionally mentioned or referred to
in Scripture with the state of things in those times,
as represented by foreign and independent accounts;
which conformity proves, that the writers of the New
Testament possessed a species of local knowledge which
could belong only to an inhabitant of that country
and to one living in that age. This argument,
if well made out by examples, is very little short
of proving the absolute genuineness of the writings.
It carries them up to the age of the reputed authors,
to an age in which it must have been difficult to
impose upon the Christian public forgeries in the
names of those authors, and in which there is no evidence
that any forgeries were attempted. It proves,
at least, that the books, whoever were the authors
of them, were composed by persons living in the time
and country in which these things were transacted;
and consequently capable, by their situation, of being
well informed of the facts which they relate.
And the argument is stronger when applied to the New
Testament, than it is in the case of almost any other
writings, by reason of the mixed nature of the allusions
which this book contains. The scene of action
is not confined to a single country, but displayed
in the greatest cities of the Roman empire. Allusions
are made to the manners and principles of the Greeks,
the Romans, and the Jews. This variety renders
a forgery proportionably more difficult, especially
to writers of a posterior age. A Greek or Roman
Christian who lived in the second or third century
would have been wanting in Jewish literature; a Jewish
convert in those ages would have been equally deficient
in the knowledge of Greece and Rome. (Michaelis’s
Introduction to the New Testament [Marsh’s translation],
c. ii. sect. xi.)

This, however, is an argument which depends entirely
upon an induction of particulars; and as, consequently,
it carries with it little force without a view of
the instances upon which it is built, I have to request
the reader’s attention to a detail of examples,
distinctly and articulately proposed. In collecting
these examples I have done no more than epitomise
the first volume of the first part of Dr. Lardner’s
Credibility of the Gospel History. And I have
brought the argument within its present compass, first,
by passing over some of his sections in which the
accordancy appeared to me less certain, or upon subjects
not sufficiently appropriate or circumstantial; secondly,
by contracting every section into the fewest words
possible, contenting myself for the most part with
a mere apposition of passages; and, thirdly, by omitting
many disquisitions, which, though learned and accurate,
are not absolutely necessary to the understanding
or verification of the argument.